CHARLESTON, W.Va. — During an event at a Catholic school in West Virginia, where legislators passed a bill this week to remove harmful dyes from school nutrition programs, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Friday taking care of your health is an act of patriotism. 

What You Need To Know

  • Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said taking care of your health is an act of patriotism

  • He made the comment at an event in West Virginia Friday

  • The state announced it is requesting a federal waiver to ban soda from the state's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

  • The West Virginia legislature also banned dyes from foods served in schools

“If you love our country, you’ve got to take care of yourself. President Trump says that he wants to make America healthy again, and he wants to make it strong again,” Kennedy said Friday from a podium that read “MAHA starts here.” “We cannot have a strong country if we have sick citizens.”

Kennedy was speaking in the capital of West Virginia, which has the highest levels of obesity and the highest rate of chronic disease of any state in the country. 

“We have a public health crisis in this country,” Kennedy said at an event where he highlighted his belief that “food is medicine” and cited National Institutes of Health studies to make his case, including one that linked a whole food diet with lower rates of violence in prisons and another that connected the incidence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and cancer with the prevalence of dyes in food. 

Earlier this week, the West Virginia Legislature became the third state in the country to pass a bill to remove dyes from food. On Friday, Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey said he hoped the new law would “lead to a broader national discussion and FDA action so we can have more consistent policies across the nation.”

At Friday’s event with Kennedy, the governor also signed a letter of intent to request a waiver from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to prevent soda from eligibility. He also announced a plan to expand work, training and educational requirements for SNAP recipients.

Nationally, about 42 million people receive SNAP benefits, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“Work is good. Work is moral, and it helps us to be stronger in the mind and the body. We need more of that right here in West Virginia,” the governor said at the event, where he acknowledged he didn’t get enough exercise and challenged all of his state’s citizens to walk at least one mile per day.

He also requested that Kennedy be his personal trainer. Kennedy often posts his workouts on social media to advocate physical fitness.

The HHS secretary responded by saying he would put the governor on a carnivore diet and have him participate in a public weigh-in once a month.

“When he’s lost 30 pounds, I’ll come back to the state and do a celebration and public weigh-in with him,” Kennedy pledged, adding, “We have a public health crisis in this country, and unfortunately West Virginia is leading the way.”

Kennedy praised Morrisey for his “visionary leadership in getting West Virginia to lead the way in transitioning off of processed foods.”

He then highlighted the cost of treating chronic disease, saying it accounts for 90% of the country’s health care budget. 

He criticized politicians for fighting about health care plans that he referred to as “sick care plans” when “the real battle is that we’re getting sicker and sicker every year. It’s really just a debate about who’s going to pay the treatment. Nobody has been focused on how do we get ourselves less sick.”